Handmade pop-up valentines

Handmade cards make me giddy, so when Corban had his first real school valentine exchange last year, we sat down together to make the cards ourselves. Corban requested pop-up cards. My goal was to just use what we had to make them. This was not a huge challenge, as I have a hoarder’s supply of paper and I’m a recovering clearance craft supply purchaser.

Here’s what we ended up with and how we did it.

First we cut the cards from cardstock and I had Corban cut two slits in the fold to make the pop up part.

Next I traced a bunch of hearts onto glitter paper and Corban cut them out and added smiley faces with permanent marker.

Corban wrote his classmates’ names on the front of the cards. We had just enough foam glitter sticker letters to use one for the first letter of every kid’s name.

He stamped a heart above the name.

Then he signed his name on the inside.

And finally we glued the hearts onto the pop-up tabs.

Sure, it’s more work than buying a pack of valentines and signing your name, but we had fun in the process and Corban was pretty excited about his cards.

This year Corban says he wants to make his cards again, so we’ll see what we come up with! And I do remember that choosing a box of valentines from the store was always super exciting as a kid, but I’ll save that joy for when I have multiple kids in school.

In other news…

I realize that it’s been a WHILE since I’ve written here, and I’m not sure what made me start typing up a post again last week. Maybe it’s that the only professional writing I’ve been doing for the past year plus has been medical/health related and I’m missing the more creative, fun topics I covered at the Journal Sentinel. If I can keep up posting here, I’ve got a lot to share. Much has happened in the past year!